Stats

This project was to help provide an alternate view of the Halo universe and story.

Throughout the duration of Halo and Halo 2, the player was always forced into a first-person perspective, only leaving it to help provide requirements to better explain the story. My goal with this project was to shed light on a lesser documented piece of the universe, the Marines.

Above, you see an ODST propped up into a corner with notable damage done to his face, as well as his surroundings. You will also note the placement/choice of his weapon, which I placed to help explain his mission, and possible reasoning for being where he is. As well as a helmet which was removed despite being a direct breech of combat protocol, in regards to obvious exasperation.
Technical Objectives

The background image in this piece was taken from a photograph, then brought into Photoshop for proper modification to help fit the night time atmosphere, as well as to give an artistic feel that was lacking. The 3D aspects were then aligned to match the Field of View degrees, and angle to match that of the background image, as well as the Camera’s image compression quality and film grain. Global Illumination was provided by a custom HDRI. Accents were provided by dim omni light sources with minimal attenuations to help provide ambiance.

ODST and Sniper rifle assets were extracted from the game, then modified to fit an overall higher resolution to better be viewed in a medium that was not limited by frame rate. Environment diffuse textures were in-game assets that were extracted, and re-painted to better fit still art. All specular, ambient, detail, normal, glossy, and displacement maps were created in Photoshop 8 CS2.

All shaders were custom made within 3D Studio Max. My goal with the environment shaders was to bring a softer, much more organic approach to the environment to better contrast with the ODST, and his equipment. All shaders outside of the environment were re-created to exact ingame specifications on the first draft. Everything from diffuse, to Perpendicular/Parallel cubemap RGB tint offsets were to match in-game.

On my second draft, I re-did assets that could be touched up to provide the most drastic difference in the end scene result, in main regards to the exclusion of having to run in real-time. Some of these included taking the cubemap from the visor, and using it as a RGB Multiply over a real time reflection. This helped to sustain the familiar purple-tint that fans have grown to know over time to associate with the ODST, but still allowed me to reflect assets within the scene with extreme detail.

*claps* this is beutiful, it really makes you feel for the Marines, in my opinion they need to be shown off more then the cannor fodder everyone pictures them in the games. ( i like them in in the games, i play to see how long i can keep them alive on legendary...without giving them all snipers)

This looks really, really good. I like the way you blended the 3D and photographical elements together. My only complaint is that the Covenant ship doesn't blend in too well with the city. The buildings all have high contrast and are kinda fuzzy, but the ship is more crisp and it doesn't have any of that bright light on it, so I can tell easily that it's CG and not part of the photo.